Catching up again....

Hey everyone! It's Christmas break and time to catch up on some overdue reflections...

I came in with positive expectations for Mission Year, but I couldn't have imagined that life would look this beautiful four months down the road. I couldn't have imagined that I would miss so much the people who were strangers just a few months ago. I would go so far as to say that these have been some of the most life-giving months of my life. I feel alive here. I'm learning what it means to live life fully. A slow and incomplete transition is taking place in my heart by simply being present.

A look back....

 

Children have given so much color to our lives in Houston!

A couple "big picture" things I'm learning:

Slow down, let go. Life is less and less about what I do and more about who I am becoming.We do not belong to a kingdom of fast-paced productivity and physical results, but a kingdom in which relationships and personal investments disrupt our schedules. Efficiency and agendas lose priority, and inconveniences can be patiently accepted, even welcomed. I can embrace the trivial moments of waiting for the bus. I can set my project aside to play tag with kids that I love. I can even obey God's good commandment to take delight in the Sabbath, for heaven's sake. When we loosen our grip on seeking security, we get to see miracles. When I stop trying to be so in-control of my life, I build unexpected friendships and become free to enjoy the simple things.

Seek the good in others and affirm it. Even within a Christian community, we each bring our unique backgrounds and perspectives to the table. But rather than getting bogged down by differences, we can build each other up according to our needs and hold onto common ground. We can look for and find the image of God in everyone, especially those who are not like us.We can listen to one another without trying to fix each other.

Recent happenings...

Recording! We finally recorded a song together! And by candlelight, nonetheless. It was awesome. you can listen to it here: http://www.noisetrade.com/baumanroad

Bikes! Jessi and I did our final week at the bike shop. Through the Earn-a-Bike program, we brought home our own bikes for free!

Art from Trash! One Saturday we picked up tires from the neighborhood ditches and painted them with the kids. We're going to plant things in them when we get back!

Dancing! We had a dance night for Scarlet's birthday! She taught us the Charleston, Salsa, and Israeli folk dance, among other things.

Looking ahead....

Gardening: We're going to start growing things!!

Doing it the old-fashioned way: I'm learning how to make my own detergent and hope to hand-wash and line-dry my laundry in an effort to save energy and money.

Murals: There are some beautiful walls waiting to be painted :)

Teaching art class: Go figure.

I am thankful for the chance to catch up with people who have been supporting me throughout this journey, and the chance to step back and take an objective look at what has taken place. I am STOKED for what's ahead and the ways we're learning to live and grow. More reflections to come....

 

Life is Beautiful

(I meant to post this last week, oops...)

My heart is overwhelmed with joy. I've experienced so much beauty in the past couple weeks, and I will try to share some glimpses of it.

Little Friends
We have been so blessed with the opportunity to get to know some wonderful kids in our neighborhood. This first photo features a couple drawings that one of the neighborhood girls drew for us last Saturday. We did sidewalk chalk, played ping pong and toilet tag, got pastries from the Panadería down the road, and I shared my pastels with them and tried to teach them how to draw horses. It was probably my favorite Saturday afternoon yet. Later we got to have them and their moms over for dinner. I am so excited to get to know them!

(Left: "Abi loves to sing, Tracy likes drawing" Right: "To: My BFFs from: Maya")

(The nursery at Fletcher)

It is such an exciting time in Mission Year because we are no longer just a new group of white strangers in town. People are calling us by name and we're building friendships with them!

(Simple Feast - James Bute Park)

Simple, beautiful moments from this past month:

Massage trains

Meeting people at bus stops and on the bus

Writing and recieving notes of encouragment

Music together

Volleyball in the park

Snuggling

Getting picked first for dodgeball :)

Unscheduled book discussions

Exploring the city

Ping pong

Sidewalk chalking

Soccer in the park

There is absolutely nothing else I would rather be doing with this season of my life.

 

 

Enjoy your week, friends



Love God, Love People

Hello! So last week each MY team wrote up a "covenant" for their team, outlining how we wish to live and grow this year and ways in which we will seek to keep each other accountable. It's a beautiful illustration of our commitment to one another and to God, so I wanted to share ours with you:

TEAM COVENANT

We commit to prayer as our first response in struggle for and with each other and our neighbors.

We commit to relate to one another:
- by laughing together
- by praying together
- by hugging it out
- through sincerity and vulnerability
- peacefully, by going directly to one another when there is conflict and always seeking restoration

We commit to listen:
- readily
- intentionally
- with open and humble hearts
- patiently
- without trying to fix each other

We commit to affirming one another by:
- building each other up according to our needs
- acknowledging the good things we see in each other
- listening to one another’s dreams
- encouraging each other in our creativity

We commit to seeking accountability in:
- following through with our commitments
- voicing our struggles
- our daily walk with God; this includes
                regular scripture reading
                prayer
                seeking God’s presence in our daily rhythms
                asking each other where we are or are not seeing God in our lives

We commit to incorporate creativity in our household and our ministry:
- We will create space to nurture and share each other’s artistic gifts
- We will challenge each other to explore new artistic areas
- We will seek to acknowledge our Creator and his creative spirit
- We will acknowledge that our creative gifts are from God
- We will worship and make music together weekly

We commit to seek justice:
- by cultivating justice as a desire of our hearts
- by striving to grow our awareness of injustice in the world, our city, and our home.
- by challenging one another to confront injustice

We commit to being good stewards, wisely using everything with which we’ve been entrusted:
- We will be fully present in our silence and our sound
- We will be generous and hospitable to our neighbors and each other
- We will be attentive to the needs of the homeless
- We will exercise together regularly
- We will respect our bodies, our budget, and our teammates by not hoarding food and by taking only what we need because all our provision comes from God
- We will reduce waste, recycling and reusing when possible
- We will remember that all of our resources belong to God, including our stipend. With that, we vow to spend wisely what we’ve been given by Mission Year. We are committed to talking through big purchases and seeking our teammates’ opinions about wants and needs.

In all things we will seek common ground and celebrate differences. In all things we will strive to worship God with our actions and attitudes, with our time and possessions. In all things we will strive to live simply. In all things we will seek to remember God’s faithfulness in past struggles, his present call, and his promise to make all things new. In all things we recognize that the goal of our lives in Christ.

Until next time,

Tracy

Catching Up: Part 2

Hey y'all! We've officially been here a month! This week I'm going to try to give you an idea of what a typical week looks like:

Monday:
We start most days together at 7:15am with coffee and someone leading us in prayer and thoughts for the day. Abi and I catch the bus around 8am to go to the Fletcher building of Mission Centers of Houston. It's about a half hour bus ride. Of the four MY teams in Houston, our house is furthest away from downtown, so we have to make plans well ahead of time. As we approach the city, the demographic ratio decreases in Hispanics and increases in African Americans. Currently on Monday and Wednesday mornings Abi and I work in the nurseries during the ESL classes. For almost three hours myself and another nursery worker tackle 12-16 toddlers. This being a new experience for me, the first day is still fresh in my mind of how overwhelming it was. But now the kids have settled in pretty well and I find myself enjoying it! Let's be honest, Spanglish-speaking toddlers are just about the cutest thing God ever made.
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons about 15-25 Preteens come to hang out. Dodgeball, soccer, and basketball are their favorite games, and I quickly discovered how much I love soccer! Those are the best days, even if it does mean coming home with a few bumps and bruises. :) We close our time with Bible study and a snack.
By the time we get home it's usually after 6pm. Our teammates who work with Ecclesia make the team dinner Mon-Thurs so it's ready when we get home and then we clean up. Mondays we gather and sing some songs together before dinner, and after we have our weekly team meeting to talk about logistical stuff - house concerns, fundraising, and also ways we were encouraged during the past week.

Tuesday:
Tuesday is clothing distribution at Fletcher to homeless and low-income people. We act as personal shoppers to those who come, and also hand out some food and hygiene kits. It's a cool opportunity to talk with people one-on-one and hear their life stories. We also spend some time organizing the clothing closet with Emilio, which can be a lot of fun because you never know what you're going to find in there! Sometimes we'll also ride with Daphne to Sam's to get snacks and stuff for the kids.
Back at the house, we have Teacup Tuesday, which just means we decided to only drink out of teacups on Tuesdays to make Curriculum Night a little more special. We discuss the assigned chapters in the book for that week and enjoy pastries that we get super cheap at the Panadería down the road. :)

Wednesday:
Wednesdays we brace ourselves for Kid's Club in the afternoon. This is by far the craziest day. About 60 elementary-aged kids running around screaming, and all you can do is pray that plenty of volunteers show up to share the load! Eventually I'll get to join in on the art class for the Preteens that goes on at this time...yeah, I'm looking forward to that day. It's not all bad, though. This past week I got to just love on some girls who missed their moms and draw some pictures for them, and that was really sweet. :)
Evenings at the house are Team Nights. The idea is just to spend some quality time together as a team. This month we've been taking turns telling our life stories, although this past week we decided to go out for pizza because two of our team members had birthdays! Sometimes kids in the neighborhood will come knock on door to see if we can play frisbee with them too.

Thursday:
Abi and I don't have to be at Fletcher til the afternoon on Thursdays, so the mornings make for some great down time - catching up on reading, playing my trumpet, etc. When we get to Fletcher we hang out with Noe and Daphne (the directors at Fletcher) and pray together before Preteens. Afterward we head over to the Gano building of the Mission Centers for City-Wide! This is the time that we get together with the other Houston teams for food, fellowship, and worship. Last night our team led worship and it was a lot of fun :)

Friday:
It's our Sabbath! Which means we can do anything, really, with the hope that it will be restful. During our technology fast we also have access to technology today (clearly), so we usually head for the library or a coffee shop. Taft, Ecclesia's old location, is one of my favorite places to chill on a Sabbath. There always seems to be homeless dudes hanging out in the cafe making art. I plan to bring some materials and join them one of these weeks. Later, my roommate Scarlet and I might close the day with a competitive game of Spanglish Bananagrams. :)

Saturday:
This is our community day. In the mornings we try to head out before the heat to visit neighbors at garage sales or the park. There are a lot of deep ditches in Houston, and in our neighborhood they tend to be full of trash, so a couple weeks ago we went trash picking for items we hope to use for art. Half of the team will go grocery shopping, which is always an adventure. In the afternoon we might make cookies for our neighbors or play with kids, and then in the evening we might have a community dinner and play frisbee or futbol (soccer).

Sunday:
We ride the bus part way to Ecclesia, and walk the rest of the way. We've been helping out with parking as the church gets used to their new location. They've been growing so much that they had to re-locate, and now we're in what used to be an old warehouse. After the service we head out with other volunteers to Simple Feast at James Bute Park. We hang out, give out food, and play volleyball with the people there. Rich and poor intersect, and it's like a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven. By the time we get home, some might be able to catch a nap while others go the local Washateria to do laundry. Eight white kids in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood stand out. We are recognized by more people than we can recognize yet. But that's also helped us to connect with people on a regular basis. The Washateria is a great place to do that.

Well, I was hoping I would have enough time left for a story, but it'll have to wait til next time.
Hasta luego!

Catching Up: Part 1

It's hard to figure out what to write about for my first in-Houston post. If I could tell you everything that has moved my heart over the past few weeks, we'd be here a long time and they'd probably kick me out of the library.

Let's start with my housemates...

Thanks to these beautiful people, I don't think I could feel any more at home in a foreign city as I do now. I live in a house full of fantastic musicians, and I am so excited to see where this goes! These past few weeks have been a time of beginning to discover who we are. What makes him laugh? What annoys her? Who opened up right away, and who is holding back? And why? And what is it like to live with me? Our perceptions constantly shift as we try to figure each other out, but it is remarkable how quickly you can get to know people that you are suddenly living with. And it's simply uncanny to me just how well we've all been getting along since Day 1! I wake up and pinch myself to make sure I haven't dreamed this.

In a few short weeks, things that were once unusual for me have become ordinary. But as Brennan Manning says, "We encounter God in the ordinariness of life." We spend more time waiting for buses than we do riding them. We spend more time walking home from the grocery store than we do shopping. We play volleyball with the homeless. And then there's my service site, where I spend mornings speaking Spanglish with toddlers and afternoons playing dodgeball and soccer with preteens.

I'm super crunched for time, but here are some more highlights from this month:
My trumpet, which I've barely touched over the past four years, has been seeing the light of day again.
David Crowder led worship at our church last Sunday :)
Last Saturday we had some neighbors (who happen to have 8 brand new adorable puppies) over to our house for frisbee, homemade pizza, and music. It was absolutely wonderful!

Little by little we are growing in love.
Until next week....!
Tracy

A Leap of Faith (July)

(This post was actually published back in July on the Mission Year site, but I added it to this blog so you can see how I got involved in Mission Year.)

So how did I get here? Why am I doing this? Mission Year seems the most unexpected, and yet most natural thing for me to do with the next year of my life. A couple months ago, life after graduation was a giant blank canvas. To say that I didn’t know what I wanted to do is only partially true. To say that I was more concerned with trying to please people than trying to please God is more true than I would like to admit. From the moment I learned about Mission Year from a friend, I knew it was something I wanted to do. The only thing that held me back at first was the unspoken (or sometimes spoken) expectation that I was supposed to try to land a well-paying job right out of college. And yet, over and again I also heard the following advice: Just take a year to volunteer – get away and have a valuable experience…This is the opportune time.

In retrospect, I can see how the decisions I’ve made over the past few years have influenced my decision to do Mission Year.

I first “got into social justice” at the end of my freshman year. By some odd series of events, I found myself co-leader of a creative activist group on my campus. But that was just the very beginning of my struggle to understand what the Kingdom of God really means, and what implications that has for my life. I became a firm believer that followers of Christ should be aware of what is going on in the world, should be politically active, should advocate for the oppressed…but I also eventually heard God telling me that he wanted me to get to know the people I was advocating for; to take a closer look at how Jesus lived, and to “go and do likewise.”

My first response to this was to join the new homeless ministry on our campus, where I got a small but powerful taste of what the Kingdom of Heaven might mean. I became fascinated with the concepts of simplicity, sustainability, community, and justice. And I could tell you about the people I’ve researched who are learning how to live out lifestyles that embody those values. But now it’s time for me to learn how to live it out. I don’t want to take one more step in this justice journey without getting my hands dirty the way Jesus did.

It’s one thing to believe that what Jesus did was good. It’s totally another to live it out.

I’m about to spend the next year of my life among “the poor.” And hopefully that means “the poor” is a label that will continue to dissolve into living, breathing people that I can love. I find it’s really hard to explain to people what I’m going to be doing this year, because any word-choices I grasp for seem already heavy with stereotypes and prejudices. Even saying I’m going to live in the “inner-city” makes it sound like I’m some noble saint going off to risk my life for the sake of druggies and hobos.

But that’s totally upside-down. What Jesus did when he came to our world was to turn our ideals of power, privilege, wealth, and security on their heads. I’m doing Mission Year because I want to give flesh to my words and research. I’m doing Mission Year because I’m becoming afraid of the numbing effect that living in comfortable suburbia can have on me. I’m doing Mission Year because I can’t begin to love the poor that Jesus loves until I step into their shoes. I know that joining Mission Year is going to mess with how I live the rest of my life, and that’s why I’m here.